Pharmacokinetics is the study of the fate of pharmaceuticals and other biologically active compounds from the time they are introduced into the body until they are eliminated. Pharmacokinetics provides a rational means of approaching the metabolism of a compound in a biological system. One of the fundamental challenges researchers face in drug, environmental, nutritional, consumer product safety, and toxicology studies is the extrapolation of metabolic data and risk assessment from in vitro cell culture assays to animals.
To develop treatment options for patients diagnosed with tumors that are non-responsive or respond poorly to treatment with a particular anti-cancer agent, there is a need for reliable robust cell lines and models that are suitable for evaluating various treatment modalities. In particular, there is a need for cell lines and models that enable the development of effective therapies for the treatment of cancer that is non-responsive or responds poorly to current treatment regimes. Furthermore, there is a great need for cell lines and models for screening drug candidates for the treatment of cancer.
The failure rate for drugs in phase clinical trials has been rising. More than 50% of these failures are due to insufficient efficacy, and almost 20% are due to toxicity. Despite identification of a vast number of anti-cancer agents against cancer cell lines in artificial cell-based two-dimensional culture system, treatment of cancer remains challenging. Therefore, developing effective model systems that better represent the in vivo tumor is imperative.